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DLC or ULC?

Capcom is having a field day defending their stance on DLC. According to them, paying to unlock content present on the disc is the best way to save hard disc space, reduce the number of patches, for smoother transitions, disparities between users when they play Multi-Player and so on.

Look beyond the exterior of good will and you will find an interior with a completely different motive. Maximum milkage. Milking every last drop of their many cash cows till they can't be milked any further. Money is the main goal of every business. The games industry is a turbulent one and companies that were once champions are now defunct. I can't blame anyone for trying to make it big for the short term period and leave when the going gets bad. But sadly defending yourselves by using the good will of the consumer? Sorry, but I don't buy that (no pun intended).

DLC stands for DownLoadable Content. PAYING to UNLOCK content already present on the disc has nothing to do with DOWNLOADING CONTENT.

Businesses need money to run but this is borderline day light robbery. Fans queue up to buy this ULC (UnLockable Content) thereby reinforcing the idea in companies like Capcom that gamers have no qualms in spending money for unlocking content that was meant to be made available to those fans in the first place! And if the fans cater to their interests, other gamers will have to put up with butchered or inferior products because they are not willing/unable to pay.

Who knows? Next thing we know, we'll be paying money to "download" (read : unlock) the game's ending!



Capcom - trying to ball their fans

DLC is becoming the bane of gaming. Horse Armour DLC is bad enough but the kind of "DLC" put out by Capcom and Bioware are criminal. Take for instance, for the "complete" Mass Effect 3 experience, gamers will have to spend over 800 dollars! And guess what? the "complete" experience is just new character(s), a combat rifle for Multiplayer and "new" costumes (maybe 1 or 2).

Should we really be willing to part with our money to such companies? Especially when they're caught for being deliberately lazy and for their blatant max-milkage schemes? Click this link only if you finished playing Mass Effect 3.

WARNING :
HEAVY SPOILERS!!!!!!!


[spoiler] http://i.imgur.com/acSCH.jpg [/spoiler]

END HEAVY SPOILERS!!!!!!


[For those who didn't click the link : Mass Effect 3 and its sad "work" done by the devs. They totally did not rip off that model's photo or that screen shot. Oh and the PS3 version of Mass Effect is plagued with frame rate drops not seen in the 360 version. Not an excuse because the gap in programming for both consoles is more or less closed. See Platinum Games and their wonderful game, Vanquish or MercurySteam and Kojima Productions' Castlevania : Lords of Shadow.]

DLC (or ULC as Capcom secretly desires) is the next step in gaming. Next gen is going to be even more disgusting in terms of microtransactions for the "complete" or "ultimate" experience. My question is this - are we really going to permit the devs to do so?

[This user wishes all those people who are going to buy the new "SUPER ULTIMATE FANTASTIC ELASTIC PLASTIC STREET FIGHTER IV" good luck. Just remember to pay 5 dollars to Capcom so that you can start the game.]

What happened to Men?

A couple of days back, as I was checking out the Eurogamer website, I came across an article called, "It's time to kick back against gaming bigots". I was taken back by what I read.

Now if you're lazy/busy/not bothered to read the article, here's a brief summary of it. Cross Assualt is an online reality show by Capcom that hosted a Street Fighter x Tekken tournament. It consists of two teams - Team Street Fighter and Team Tekken.

The captain of Team Tekken, Aris Bakhtanians, made a ton of disgusting comments on a member of his OWN team, a gamer called Miranda Pakozdi. Comments included, "Miranda, I wanna know your bra size!" and "How does Miranda smell?". There are far worse comments but I'm not going to post them here. Now from the tone of his voice, he meant them for fun but eventually escalated and resulted in this entire debacle.

Miranda laughed along with the others initially but then came to a point where she couldn't stand the regular bashing so she gave up playing properly and lost each fight by not even fighting back. She stopped fighting and just moved the stick forward. Clearly, she just wanted to leave and quickly. And I know people are going to say that she shouldn't have forfeited but think of what she was going through. She was being made a sexual spectacle and harassed in front of people. What started out as fun ended as this.

a_med_Miranda_and_Aris.png
Miranda (left) and Aris (right)

Now I don't what Capcom was thinking when they hosted this tournament/show because they didn't even have/enforce a code of conduct. They could have atleast stopped the tournament and warned participants about the use of language. And NO, giving out a statement telling participants to "behave better" is NOT going to make things any better.

What Capcom needed to do was to strictly implement rules regarding the behaviour and language used by participants. Violaters should be warned once and disqualified on further violations.

Aris defended his actions saying, "This is a community that's, you know, 15 or 20 years old, and the sexual harassment is part of a culture, and if you remove that from the fighting game community, it's not the fighting game community--it's StarCraft."

Every community has its share of idiots but generalizing that this the attitude borne by ever member of a community is plain idiocy. Regardless of where you are, there is always a need to behave properly. Blatant disregard for basic rules of conduct is not acceptable. You don't need to swear to be a part of a community and no, you don't need to sexually harass anyone to be a "part of culture".

Fortunately, Aris did release a statement apologizing for his behaviour but sadly, the damage has been done.

The mistake was on everyone's part. Aris shouldn't have spoken like that, Miranda shouldn't have entertained Aris' way of speaking to her initially and Capcom should have done what they can to stop this from blowing out of proportion.

The gaming community already has a bad rep. Seeing more fuel being added to a fire is just depressing.